Upgrading a 500mhz computer: why?

[starwiz]

I have a 500mhz PIII with 256mb of RAM running Windows 2000.

I mainly do schoolwork on my computer, though I do play games infrequently, and do some web development about as infrequently.

I'm looking to upgrade my computer to an Athlon 2200+ with 512mb of RAM, but in order to do so, I need to justify spending the money.

So why should I upgrade, if I should upgrade at all?

Word and excel won't run significantly faster; they're plenty fast as they are anyway.

It certainly would help my games, but I don't spend much time gaming; I can't justify spending the upwards of $300 it's going to cost for
the CPU, RAM (I need all new RAM, since I'm upgrading from such an old computer), motherboard, case (my case right now is proprietary, since I bought it from Dell), and PSU (Dell's PSU is also proprietary) just to play games faster.

Would it significantly help my development? I do some Photoshop, but nothing that uses a lot of resources, and I don't use it too much. The rest of my development is mainly done in Frontpage and notepad; Frontpage doesn't seem to tax my system significantly, and notepad certainly doesn't.

Is there really anything significant about an upgrade that would justify it to me? Or should I stay at my (ancient) PIII 500 until there is?

Thanks in advance,
-Justin Lebar

 

[nick1985]

welcome to the anandtech forums. if you are satisfied with how your computer perfoms, then leave it as is. if you would like do do some more gaming, i would suggest another stick of RAM and a new video card, maybe a ti-4200? you could get those 2 things for about 150 shipped. you will be able to play most games with that upgrade.

 

[starwiz]

I'd actually upgraded my vcard to a radeon 8500 a while ago...lol; it literally doubled my 3dmarks.

Upgrading the RAM as it is, though, would be a bit more expensive, since I already have both DIMMs full...something to consider, though.

 

[McCarthy]

Hey starwize, welcome. A lot of us are in similar situations, we've got good, fast computers, but can't help but want faster. So many new things, it's hard to leave that credit card in the pocket sometims.

Look at $300 this way, are you going to get more or less value for your dollar if you:
A) upgrade your computer and can play games
B) buy an Xbox to play games on and leave your computer alone
C) Take your girlfriend out to an extra 15 movies
D) Buy a new bike for the summer
E) Some mix of the above

Games really come down to entertainment dollars so maybe thinking about it from that approach will help. I'm sure not going to try to convince anyone to upgrade a perfectly good computer based on entertainment value.

WWYD?

(What Would Yoda Do)

 

[nick1985]

linky


for about 60-70 dollars shipped you can give your system quite a kick with the extra RAM

 

[nick1985]

also, you might even consider upgrading your actual CPU itself

 

[Slogun]

I don't think "upgrade" is quite the accurate term for what you would need to do to get a faster system.
Sounds like you would need new CPU, mobo, RAM, case, and PSU.
Given that, you really would need to be putting together essentially an all new system and "upwards of $300" beomes more like "starting at $300."

You are quite correct that your Dell mobo, case and CPU, since proprietary, all go together. I am assuming you have one of the mid-late 90's Dell systems (probably Dimension series)in which even the Intel mobo was specially built for Dell with non standard ATX connection as well as custom, non-standard front panel connectors. Here's more info about some of that. I have rebuilt two such systems, and it was quite a learning experience accompanied by some feelings of indignation at what Dell had done.

If money is tight, you can probably get by on the current system for a while longer. Only problem is you will not be able to run the latest games that are comming out.

 

[starwiz]

I guess my philosophy with upgrading is to upgrade to something relatively new--not so new that it's blisteringly expensive, but still new--so as to limit the number of upgrades and (in theory) save money. So while I certainly could upgrade my CPU (or even my RAM), doing so would be going from old to not-quite-so-old...while I see the advantage here, it really isn't large enough to justify to me something like simply a CPU upgrade (which would be bounded by the motherboard to ~1ghz).

The RAM would help...I'll keep that in mind...again, though, I don't imagine that it would have a huge impact on my computer's performance...I tend not to have many programs running at the same time.

I liked your analysis, McCarthy...I'm not sure what would being more entertainment, because I really play very few games right now. Perhaps that'd change if I could play them...I'm really not sure.

You're right, Slogun: "upgrade" may not be the best term...but I am keeping my vcard, hdd, and CD-drive. So maybe "retrofit"?

You're right on about my computer: it looks ATX, but is just different enough to make it impossible to upgrade the motherboard or PSU...too late now for me to complain about it, though.

It's not like money's incredibly tight, but I'd like to be able to justify the upgrade/retrofit for something other than playing games...there are many other things I could spend my money on, and while I'd love to spend it on my computer, if the only advantage to that is that I can play games that I don't play right now anyway, I'll find something else to buy.

 

[Texun]

I recently gave my nephew a PIII-550 for school, it does a great job and he is totally happy with it.

If your computer is still doing what you need then don't change it. One you start the upgrade cascade it gets real steep in a hurry, but it looks like you already know that.

If you want to juice it up a little then get a good monitor. You stated that you use your computer for text, Front Page, and a little Photoshop work. Unless you already have a nice 19" monitor I think spending your money on a good flat screen would be a great option.

The human interface component is the most important part of a computer in my opinion. What good is speed when it looks the same? Keep in mind that games drive the upgrade rage more than anything else, and just look at the number of forum threads on improving benchmarks. I haven't seen anyone yet that said they had to double or triple their computing power to use Office or Photoshop. If you used heavy applications 40 hours a week it would be different, but I don't see that in your post.

Welcome to the party!

 

[Slogun]

Yea, I had upgraded my Dell PII 233 to a 500mHz Celeron using a slotkit adapter a few years ago. That was the max that mobo could take.
It still runs very well for my wife's needs which include word processing, websurfing and photo management.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Upgrading a 500mhz computer: why?

Around here lately you evidently want to upgrade so you can do extreme underclocking&and undervolting to make it a quite and cool system

:disgust:

 

[AU Tiger]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Upgrading a 500mhz computer: why?

Around here lately you evidently want to upgrade so you can do extreme underclocking&and undervolting to make it a quite and cool system

:disgust:

Quiet became my most important criteria last year and it appears that you are right about more people wanting quiet over speed lately.

----

As to the original question:

Don't spend the money. There are many people running similar systems to yours. Unless you can pinpoint one game you really want to play that you can't currently play or if you want to encode digital video I don't see any reason why your current setup should be touched.

 

[Davegod]

the question is asking US wether YOU want to upgrade. Either you want to, or dont - not something we can deicide for you.

If you decide you do want to upgrade, although it appears you dont, theres still many choices for cost vs. performance. I can find a KT333 mobo with most bells on, plus a XP 1700+ AND 256mb of crucial ddr266 for what, £120? hardly any more than most places charge for a XP2400+ (itelf a good value cpu for people wanting performance at fairly low cost) - wouldnt really want to be expecting to play doom3 with all the bells and whistles on though. Case and PSU, well you could spend £40 on some "junk" that works or £100 on a good quality Antec case with truepower PSU, up to £300 for a styled case and er, the same antec psu. Ok so not your currency but numbers still compare

 

[Slogun]

Yea, well, I guess he wanted to ask us if there was some reason why he should upgrade that he wasn't aware of.

 

[Chaotic42]

My advice to you:

If you're not a computer enthusiast, like many (most?) of us here, upgrade whenever there are things that you need to do, that you just *can't*. When you get so mad at your computer being so slow that you don't want to deal with it anymore, that's when you upgrade. Me? I find that I spend about the same amount of money for upgrades. I paid $92 for a K6-200, $95 for a Celeron 333, $89 for a 1GHz T-Bird, and $105 (each) for Athlon XP 1800+s

I'd pick a number and stay there. So, everytime you upgrade, spend that amount.

I also try to wait for a doubling or tripling in performance before I can justify an upgrade. This time, I'm going to try and hold out for a 5x upgrade (I guess that would be around 6-7GHz).

Anyway, good luck on the decision.

 

[dexvx]

Actually, many people have reported that modded slotkets or using Powerleap's T-slot will work with some dell dimension systems (R, B, T series). If you decide to go that route, you can almost triple your processor speed (and quite linearly triple) for not a lot of money.

 

[SgtZulu]

You're in the wrong forum n00b.
Most people here do a total upgrade every 6 months.

 

[Slogun]

ooooo, that's not very gracious.

 

[Booster]

Why you don't need to upgrade at all... And that's b/c a P3 500 with 256MB of RAM is still a fairly current PC (if you don't play games or do any heavy duty stuff like graphics etc).

Now if you had a Pentium 1 233MMX or a PII 233-400 that would of course need some major upgrading.

 

[Slogun]

Originally posted by: Booster
Why you don't need to upgrade at all... And that's b/c a P3 500 with 256MB of RAM is still a fairly current PC (if you don't play games or do any heavy duty stuff like graphics etc).

Now if you had a Pentium 1 233MMX or a PII 233-400 that would of course need some major upgrading.

Yea, I think that's what he wanted to hear

 

[zephyrprime]

Get a Socket adapter and a p3 1.4. $60-70 out the door.

 

[starwiz]

Thanks for the advice, everyone.

I'll look into upgrading my CPU like zephyrprime suggested; that seems like a fairly good idea.

Thanks again; I really appreciate it.

 

[AtomicDude512]

Originally posted by: nick1985
welcome to the anandtech forums. if you are satisfied with how your computer perfoms, then leave it as is. if you would like do do some more gaming, i would suggest another stick of RAM and a new video card, maybe a ti-4200? you could get those 2 things for about 150 shipped. you will be able to play most games with that upgrade.

A 500Mhz P3 is not enough to fully utilize what a Ti4200 has to offer, my XP 1700 dosent! You only start to fully load it at about the 2.7 or 2700 range.

 

[starwiz]

Zephyrprime: you mentioned I should get a socket adapter then a PIII 1.4.

I looked online for a while and the closest I could find to the processor you suggested was a "Intel Celeron (Pentium III based) 1.4GHz 256K 100MHz FSB FCPGA2". This seems almost fine, until you see that it's a "Tualatin" processor, a group of processors CNET says were "The fastest new mobile Pentium IIIs" (when the article was written).

So now I have two questions:

Firstly, where can I find this chip you describe?

Secondly, where can I find a converter for my PIII socket (slot L, is it called?) to whatever socket that one uses?

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[human2k]

PIII 500mhz is a speed-demon for excel and word processing. NO need to upgrade.